RT.com (Russian Today, TV Network in English) devoted some airtime to Egypt today under the title, “Permanent Revolution: Resistance lives among disillusioned Egyptians.”
Among the disillusioned interviewed by the network was Khaled Telema, an activist with the Coalition of the Youth Revolution:
We weren’t against Mubarak as a person; we were against the whole system, against oppression and injustice. Although the SCAF [the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] said they were pro-revolution, their actions show they’re applying the same techniques used by him [Mubarak].
As reported by Human Rights Watch in September of 2011, in roughly 8 months of military rule, over 12,000 Egyptians had already faced military tribunals, a distant record against Mubarak’s 30-year ruling. Speaking to RT, journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy said that more than 13,000 Egyptians have been processed through military courts in the last year, including labor strikers–formerly tried in ordinary courts–and the rubber bullets that dispersed demonstrators in the past have been replaced by live ammunition.
Questioned on the controversy surrounding the mostly-Islamist composition of the panel charged with drafting Egypt’s constitution, Dr. Jamal Sultan of the Al-Ahram Center of Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, warned that this lack of representation of other views would intensify political struggle and instability. However, when pressed about the West’s expectations for Egypt’s transition to democracy versus the prospect of an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law, Dr. Sultan defined the “name of the game” as being about “governance and stability”–not about human rights:
I believe that if the Islamist government in Egypt will be able to provide governance and stability and won’t be a cause for instability at the regional level […] perhaps the West will at least remain silent if there are things that they might not like, in terms of civil liberties or human rights in the country.
Clearly the West has remained silent before, for decades at a time. But Dr. Sultan goes further:
The problem with the Mubarak regime was that it wasn’t effective in providing for this stability, and I think that if an Islamist government would do it, I think the West would live with that.
Put this way, Dr. Sultan himself appears ready to “live with that,” which would ring contrary to his warnings about a one-world-view constitution.
But while some might hope for stability at any cost, others, such political activist Nahla Salem (also interviewed by RT), see the growing compromises as fuel for a “second wave of the revolution”:
The economic situation is really getting worse, and I believe [the] people who are suffering nowadays, because they can’t afford to feed their families they are going to lead […] a second wave of the revolution, but it’s going to be really, really aggressive, and really, really violent and bloody.”
Unfortunately for Egypt’s poor, revolutions don’t have an history of improving economic conditions for everyday citizens.
amadorsquare 